Month: March 2016

The market intelligence studies provide the necessary information for both operators and Destination Management Organizations (DMO) to design their marketing strategies and actions optimally and efficiently. This can be summarized in a series of specific objectives:

As aforementioned, with Marketing 3.0 there is a shift from vertical to horizontal control, being that the communities of creative activists are those who do the marketing by supporting brands concerned about making positive impacts in their communities. Therefore, the new marketing has the social networks as the main scenario wheremost brand marketing activities take place.

The communication strategy embraces collaborative channels as its main conveyors of the value proposition, as these are the most trusted ones by the communities of potential stakeholders. Furthermore, the new communication channels have to enable connectivity and interactivity to empower community members to participate at any time –especially when they are enjoying the destination- and share content with the rest of the community. The new wave technology is what allows community members to express their ideas and opinions in collaboration with the rest of the community.

The destination should accommodate the will of tourists to connect with other tourists who want to share their experience and story. Only by helping tourists connect with each other and deliver the promised brand values will the destination gain the crucial support of the communities.

The main marketing contents to be shared throughout the communities are stories. Stories are to convey the Mission, vision and values of the destination brand embodied in the life-changing experiences in a compelling manner drawing the attention of potential tourists and stakeholders.

Compelling stories are the new advertising, and their success is measured by the extent to which these stories are the focus of conversations in the social networks. These stories create loyalty among stakeholders who end up regarding the brand as an icon. Then, these enthusiast stakeholders become brand ambassadors by spreading the stories throughout the social networks. This is the power of storytelling.

To generate stories and other marketing contents, there has to be design of a content marketing system with a strategy to leverage the already existing stories and also to leverage the creativity of the stakeholders to make up new ones, as well as to spread the stories throughout the social media. The open innovation system is the one that leverages all the knowledge and creativity to nurture the content marketing system, and the existing local communities are where we should search for the existing stories to start-up the content marketing system.

What main challenges do you foresee in developing this communication strategy?

The new marketing paradigm shifts from control to collaboration. It turns from vertical to horizontal, as most consumers trust other consumers rather than businesses: word of mouth and social media are at the core of new customer relationships. Businesses no longer control their brands, as these are owned by the customers and are developed through collaboration among them all.

All what companies do is aligning their actions to their corporate mission and empowering costumers to become active agents in the accomplishment of the mission as brand controllers and innovators, hence ultimately becoming brand ambassadors. To approach customers’ human spirit, these have to view the business as a change agent that strives to make the world a better place according to their concerns. Then, as long as the mission is successfully accomplished and there is a growing awareness about such accomplishment, the destination’s brand becomes a symbol within the stakeholders’ lives.

Marketing 3.0 is based upon co-creation, communitization and characters. Customers and other stakeholders take an active role in the development of experiences and stories through collaborative innovation platforms. Starting from a generic experience, every tourist can tailor it to his needs and motivations, and eventually share it with the community explaining his story and thus nurturing the innovation system with new ideas. For a brand to become a symbol, it needs that its stories create great characters with whom the stakeholders feel identified, as they strive and manage to address the community challenges and concerns.

Beyond photo sharing in social media, word of mouth, ratings and reviews for specific services such as restaurants and accommodation, do you think that there is ever any chance for tourists to contribute on the destination’s marketing?

In the international travel market, there is nowadays an increasing fragmentation especially due to the raise of special interest travelers. They are highly educated individuals driven by values and cultural motivations in accordance with the aforementioned life-transforming experiences. Moreover, they are among the tourists accounting for the highest expenditures in the destinations.

As it happens with all new business models and products, they are to take the role of innovators and early adopters, both the adventurous ones who like to try brand new experiences and the opinion leaders who observe the adventurous innovators and decide to follow them once they are convinced about its benefits. They are the visionary consumers who have the capacity to influence the mainstream ones about the benefits of the value proposition, and so the primary strategic target to attract. They are change leaders and the most receptive to new ideas and value propositions.

Even if “Tourists 3.0” are to become not only our most enthusiast customers, but also our main brand ambassadors over time, many destinations may need to attract customer segments other than these “mission driven tourists”, at least during the early stages of their development or to balance the demand seasonality, for it is necessary to describe these other targets with precision in order to develop the appropriate marketing strategies. The tourists’ characterization should describe many variables such as the geographical origin, main motivation(s), length of stay, demand seasonality, sociological profile, expenditure, type of group, etc. The Whitepaper “Envisioning destination intelligence 3.0” explains in detail the customer characterization, among many other issues.

In this section, the model should explain the kind of targets that the destination wants to attract, specifying their strategic importance for the destination from the short to the long term, in terms of expected engagement in the creation and delivery of stories, or in terms of the revenue streams they generate to balance the demand seasonality, or to subsidize mission driven activities or other segments. Customer segments should therefore be classified according to their priority level, synthesizing the value they demand and the value and revenue they bring in.

How do you think it is possible to leverage tourists 3.0’s talent and influential power for the benefit of tourism destinations?

In practicing Marketing 3.0, profit comes from the appreciation of the business contribution to the community well-being, and so the destination’s intended impact on the stakeholder community has to be at the core of its positioning strategy, being perceived as a positive force in addressing the communities concerns and aspirations. This entails addressing functional, emotional and spiritual needs, for these have to be regarded when proposing the set of brand values.

The positioning strategy consists of defining how the destination wants to be perceived by its stakeholders: its unique value proposition and its core values, as the main institutional standards of behavior. Such standards have to be embedded into the executives’ leadership style to transmit them to the employees and partners to ultimately spread them throughout the whole stakeholder system.

In defining and implementing the positioning strategy, brands have to care about the three key points:

Brand identity: defining a unique value proposition in terms of functional needs to position the brand in the minds of the stakeholders.

Brand image: defining values that appeal to the emotional needs of the stakeholders.

Brand integrity: establishing trust through the consistent delivery of the brand promise in order to fulfill their human spirit.

In marketing 3.0 only originality, authenticity and honesty are effective, because the community members are actually those who do the marketing of the destination through telling stories about the experiences they have lived. The destination has to focus its efforts on being authentic, delivering the brand promise and facilitating the connection between tourists to let them share their experiences.

Beyond cultural transformation, mission accomplishment –brand promise delivery- and adequate communication –through horizontal storytelling-, do you think there is any other necessary mean to convey the integrity of the brand positioning?

Beyond the targeting criteria according to the kind of tourism activities -nature, culture, sports, etc.-, the primary target destinations 3.0 intend to attract and engage is the so called “Creative society”. Creative people are the most expressive and collaborative consumers, and also those who are most active in the social media, thus connecting and influencing many other consumers and becoming a backbone in the local economies. They are trusted and admired within their community, and through their concern and awareness about the social impact of brands, they are to become our best brand ambassadors.

Because of their aim for self-actualization above other needs, and their desire to create and collaborate, they are the ones who are most likely to become engaged with our value proposition and to participate in co-creating experiences and stories for the destination. They are those searching for spiritual fulfillment on top of other motivations, and this is what unlocks the most of their creativity. Furthermore, they are trendsetters and change leaders within their communities. They are the new wave of consumers who move the society towards a more human centered world. They are Tourists 3.0.

In summary, the prototype of the “Tourist 3.0” could be described as someone who:

Is driven by the aim for contribution to make the world a better place, and for human spirit fulfillment.

Belongs to communities and social media networks, which are the main and most trusted source of information, and with whom shares knowledge and stories.

Likes to co-create and collaborate with other consumers in his favorite brands’ marketing activities.

Is concerned about the impact of tourism on the environment and the local communities.

Looks for authentic experiences through which he can develop new skills, learn about new realities, cultures, and ways of life, which open his mind and ultimately change or influence his life.

Have you heard of the Creative Society? Do you regard its related trends as futuristic or current?

In tourism 3.0 it is essential to understand that the new marketing focuses on weaving values and mission within the business culture, which is reflected deeply in the experiences and stories marketing the destination, and ultimately obtains profits through the appreciation of the positive impact that the business has on the society, the environment and the culture. It is through the opportunity given to have this positive impact that destination models 3.0 target the stakeholders’ human spirit. Furthermore, by empowering all stakeholders to participate, they become accountable for the accomplishment of the mission.

Beyond the mission driven value proposition that sets destination models 3.0 apart from other tourism development models, it may be necessary in many cases to target non-mission driven tourists offering non-mission driven experiences to guarantee sufficient revenue streams all year round, or to partially subsidize the mission driven activities. In such cases, the model should prioritize the development of experiences that appeal to the affluent tourists and other segments or niche markets that contribute in balancing the demand seasonality, assessing also whether these tourists generate any additional negative impact either on the natural or social sphere.

In this section, there should be explained not only the competitive advantage(s) that sets it apart from other destinations and the portfolio of experiences it intends to offer to visitors, but also the vision, mission and its related goals, so long as they are the primary reason for which mission driven stakeholders are to get engaged with the destination.

Do you think we should consider anything else when defining the value proposition and the competitive advantage?

The growth of the tourism business with emerging outbound markets and new destinations is drawing an increasingly competitive scenario with plenty of opportunities. Moreover, the markets are evolving rapidly with new business models, new communication & sales channels and new market segments.

This major dynamism, innovation and market fragmentation requires a systematic analysis to detect new trends, new key success factors, foresee its threats and take advantage of its opportunities. Furthermore, along the last years there has been a significant decrease on the tourism promotion profitability, which suggests the convenience of innovating in more efficient marketing strategies and tactics.

Market intelligence (MI) is a systematic process of search, selection, analysis and distribution of information about the competitive environment, recognized and accepted by all the organization and its stakeholders.

The market intelligence studies are to identify business opportunities and market trends, analyze competitors, their practices and strategies, and all the variables that affect the evolution of the competitive scenario in order to orientate the strategic planning.

The impact of the MI activities consists mainly of the support given to cost reduction decisions -including risk reduction on the decisions to make- and de discovery of opportunities and innovations that produce an increase to the value provided to the client. The knowledge generated by the MI may be summarized in the following points:

Detailed company profile of all potential collaborators.

Best practices in marketing, management, innovation and new business models.

Markets and segments attractiveness. Opportunities, market trends and evolution of all the key factors influencing business development and profitability.

Key information for the design, innovation and product development obtained from deep demand analysis.

Key information for the optimization of the company’s commercial missions in the outbound markets, as well as for the Tourist Boards.

At the end, this brings the following benefits:

Decrease in the risk of failure.

Business diversification with the penetration in new markets and segments.

Improvement in the competitiveness and the innovation process.

A revenue increase from the opportunities of which we take advantage.

A major profitability of the marketing investment.

Can you envision any other outputs or benefits of the market intelligence?

Once the Mission, vision and goals are defined, it’s time to think about the necessary strategies to guide our efforts towards the goals. Prior to the mission statement, there has to be a marketing diagnosis to set the starting point from which we intend to achieve all these goals.

Beyond the conventional segmentation criteria according to geographical origin, sociological and motivational profile, the key target group to engage in order to succeed in the marketing 3.0 transformation are the creative activists, also referred to as creative society or tourists 3.0. The challenge is mainly expanding the network of mission driven activists and other like-minded contributors.

These kinds of tourists are more likely to be found in specific communities or social networks, for the conventional marketing channels are not likely to work. They are concerned about the impact of the tourism activity on the environment and the local communities, and are driven by the aim for contribution to make the world a better place, and for spiritual fulfillment above other motivations.

They are activists in the social media either criticizing the brands creating negative impacts on the society and the environment, or promoting brands concerned about positive impacts. Such networks are becoming the main and most trusted source of information for most consumers who increasingly trust other consumers rather than companies. It is through these social networks that consumers share their knowledge and are to share stories about the life-changing experiences offered in the destinations.

Unlike typical passive consumers, tourists 3.0 are willing to take an active role in their relationships with their favorite brands, through co-creation of products and marketing contents. They want to be active players in the brand’s marketing activities, mostly through the social media networks. They are the ones who hold the community’s trust, and so have the power to decide which brands are to be supported.

They are more motivated by self-actualization, which is what unleashes most of their creativity, and by giving them the opportunity to contribute in social and environmental issues the destination is targeting and appealing to their human spirit, their primary motivator. In the destination, they look for authentic experiences through which to develop new skills, learn about new realities, cultures, and ways of life, which open their mindset and ultimately change or influence their life.

Attracting, convincing and engaging them in the mission purpose turns them into brand ambassadors who spread the stories about the destination’s experiences, ultimately expanding the network of brand enthusiasts at no cost to the destination.

Another strategic target is that of the young generations, who may get engaged through special educational programs and game-playing activities. Furthermore, it is interesting to explore the many niches and segments of special interest travelers, characterized by a high educational level, sensitivity towards cultural and environmental issues, and high expenditure in the destination.

What percentage of the desired marketing impacts do you think we can expect from this type of brand ambassadors, compared to the impacts created through conventional marketing in mission driven destinations?